They claim that NOAA solved the 15-year pause in global warming by “adjusting” the temperature record from 1998 to 2012, thus suddenly showing more than twice as much warming as other data sets indicate.

Approximately 300 scientists, engineers, economists, and other climate experts sent a letter to U.S. House Science Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) in support of his investigation of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

They think NOAA scientists may have violated federal laws when they published a 2015 study purporting to eliminate the 15-year “hiatus” in global warming from the temperature record.

“We, the undersigned, scientists, engineers, economists and others, who have looked carefully into the effects of carbon dioxide released by human activities, wish to record our support for the efforts of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology to ensure that federal agencies complied with federal guidelines that implemented the Data Quality Act,” read the letter to Chairman of the House Science Committee, Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith.

In June 2015, NOAA issued a report purporting to find Earth had continued to warm during a nearly two-decades-long period when every other data set found a pause or hiatus in rising temperatures.

“In our opinion… NOAA has failed to observe the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] (and its own) guidelines, established in relation to the Data Quality Act.”

Smith launched an investigation into NOAA’s study last summer over concerns it was pushed out to bolster President Barack Obama’s political agenda. Democrats and the media have largely opposed the probe into NOAA scientists and political appointees, but Smith is determined to continue investigating. NOAA officials surrendered emails to congressional investigators in December.

“Americans are tired of research conducted behind closed doors where they only see cherry-picked conclusions, not the facts,” Smith told The Daily Caller News Foundation. This letter shows that hundreds of respected scientists and experts agree that NOAA’s efforts to alter historical temperature data deserve serious scrutiny.”

The 300 letter signers included 25 climate or atmospheric scientists, 23 geologists, 18 meteorologists, 51 engineers, 74 physicists, 20 chemists and 12 economists. Additionally, 150 signers had doctorates in a related field, one was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and two were astronauts.

NOAA scientists upwardly adjusted temperature readings taken from the engine intakes of ships to eliminate the “hiatus” in global warming from the temperature record. Those readings are biased by heat absorbed and reflected from ship’s hulls and pouring off engines.

The NOAA study in dispute claims the scientists found a solution to the 15-year “pause” in global warming. They “adjusted” the hiatus in warming the temperature record from 1998 to 2012, the “new analysis exhibits more than twice as much warming as the old analysis at the global scale.” (Italics added)

“As has been acknowledged by numerous scientists, the engine intake data are clearly contaminated by heat conduction from the structure, and as such, never intended for scientific use,” wrote climate scientists Dr. Patrick J. Michaels and Dr. Richard S. Lindzen of the libertarian Cato Institute on the in the science blog Watts Up With That. (Italics added)

“If we subtract the [old] data from the [new] data… we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did,” climate expert Bob Tisdale and meteorologist Anthony Watts wrote on the same science blog. “It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise. Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.”